Does corporate entrepreneurship exist?

Recent research shows that entrepreneurship is taking on an increasingly important role in the strategic management process. Corporate growth and development, as well as the company’s ability to increase profitability over time, have increasingly relied on the entrepreneurship function for many a year (Jones & Butler, 1992). From the view of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs notice opportunities, act and create new hierarchies or ventures to organize transactions. If successful, they reap the profit from their actions. However, if the entrepreneur happens to be the firm’s manager, when the management function is distinguished from the entrepreneurial function, agency problem arises in the new hierarchy.

For a large corporation, the situation of principals and agents would be obvious as the function of entrepreneurship has become separate from the management. Any entrepreneurial spirit of the manager or employee could conflict with his personal interest as the agent. Furthermore, with the imbalance of the reward system, the manager or employee could decide to develop the entrepreneurial idea outside the corporation for a higher return than the salary. It would be interesting to look into the factors that lead a manager or employee to explore the entrepreneurial opportunity within the corporation or outside it.